


cold is the water

by glitteratiglue



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 21:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4976791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteratiglue/pseuds/glitteratiglue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On July 24th, 1948, James Buchanan Barnes goes missing, and Steve finally knows why it felt like he was living on borrowed time.</p><p>(AU where Steve and Bucky survive the war. Things get complicated after that.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	cold is the water

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to evieeden for all her cheerleading.  
>  **N.B.** As for my shameless use of _Agent Carter_ characters - no prior knowledge required, but for the purposes of this AU, the events of the first series take place 3-4 years later than in canon.
> 
> Warning for vague internalised homophobia.

Steve wakes.

They tell him he was pulled from the wreck of the Valkyrie after three months of searching. He was found frozen solid, no sign of life but for the faint, wet whisper of a heartbeat under icy skin.

He has missed the end of the war.

When Steve wakes, Bucky is there, hands clasped in his, tears drying on his cheeks that he’ll pretend later he didn’t cry, and Steve is so grateful he can think of nothing else, not even Peggy.

Peggy comes to see him a few days later. “You didn’t wake up for four days, you know. Sergeant Barnes never left your bedside.” A shadow passes over her face, and she looks away.

Steve feels his cheeks burn with shame, because she _knows._

“You should tell him, Steve,” Peggy says, squeezing his hand gently.

But Steve has never been as brave as Peggy, because the words he has never said to Bucky stick in his throat so many times when he tries to get them out.

He hates himself for a little while, but finally, after a few more missions with the Commandos, he goes home to Brooklyn, and there is _Bucky_ at his side – Bucky, who Steve could have lost if the railing on the side of the train had given an inch.

“We’re home, Stevie,” Bucky says, a tremor in his voice.

Steve smiles, brittle and tight.

__

The first few days are dreamlike, Bucky thinks. He and Steve in Brooklyn, in their own apartment – rented on Uncle Sam’s dime – with two bedrooms and a fire that actually works. It’s more than they would have dreamed of back when they were kids.

Steve is summoned to do some work with the SSR – a favour to Peggy – and is out of the house most days.

Bucky doesn’t like going out. When he does, he bumps into people who knew him before, and has to watch the way their faces fall when they see the faded light in his eyes, when they realise how messed up he is these days.

He thought he might have broken a long time ago, when Steve tore the straps away and pulled him off Zola's table. But he didn't.

Instead, it’s happening now, when he has Steve back, the war's over and everything is good, it _should_ be good - except Bucky wakes every day with a tight chest and wet lungs, gasping for breath. He dreams of needles and their contents that burned him under his skin, of hushed voices speaking German and cold eyes under bottle-top glasses. And to think that when they first got back, Bucky thought he was fine. If only he’d known his body was only holding the pieces of itself together out of a sense of self-preservation, and it would take coming home for him to break.

On the bad days, Bucky’s hands shake at the slightest noise: a car backfiring, the shouts of kids playing in the street outside. Steve watches him with worried, tired eyes. Those times, Bucky wishes he was better at hiding how broken he is.

What he can’t hide from Steve are the dreams, the ones that leave him screaming and shivering. Bucky always hears the shift of bedsprings from the room next door that tell him Steve’s awake.

Steve doesn’t always come to him; he knows Bucky doesn’t like to feel like a burden, so he tries to give him the space to fall apart in peace.

But sometimes, the door creaks open and Steve slides into Bucky’s bed without a word. They don’t talk, but they hold hands in the dark and Steve pretends not to notice how much Bucky is trembling next to him.

Steve thinks it’s the factory and Zola – and sometimes it is. Other times, it’s much worse than that. In his dreams, Bucky watches Steve put the plane down in the water over and over, until he wakes, wild-eyed and retching, listening for the rustle of sheets on the other side of the wall that lets him know Steve is alive and _here._

Even when they were raising hell all over Europe on suicide missions with the Commandos, Bucky had never figured on Steve being the one who died – it was always meant to be him. Bucky was the one who wasn’t supposed to be there, who should have stuttered out his last breath on that factory table.

And then it happened, and he had to live with it. For three months, he knew what it was to lose Steve, and he'd wanted to die rather than have to live with that yawning, gaping hole in his heart.

The war’s still going on inside of Bucky.

\--

Peggy leans over the desk and asks, “Steve, are you alright?” her tone so gentle that it makes Steve swallow back a sharp gasp.

“No.” Steve looks up from the tactical manual he is reviewing; he can't lie to Peggy, not after everything they've been through.

“Is it James?” Her eyes are piercing.

Steve drops his head. “I don’t know how to help him.”

Her firm hand rubs circles on Steve’s shoulder.

“Be there, Steve. That helps more than you realise. He needs time.”

\--

The nightmares aren’t the worst part, for Bucky.

While he sleeps, his traitorous subconscious throws up images of Steve: a cut-glass jaw; the roughness of stubble under his fingers; cornflower blue eyes; a soft mouth that rarely smiles anymore, and Bucky wants.

He wants.

Before the war, Bucky would let Steve share his bed on cold nights – because of the fear deep in his chest, that this might be the one night Steve stopped breathing after a bad asthma attack – and sometimes he would wake with his cock pressed into his thigh, burning with shame.

One night, Bucky wakes from a dream like that, hard and aching, his chest heaving with the loss of what he never had in the first place. There are tears on his cheeks, and it _hurts_. Not having Steve hurts so much that Bucky has to push a hand under his shorts and touch himself silently. When he comes, Bucky bites his tongue and hates himself just a little bit more. He shouldn't want Steve, not like this, it's not right - but he's always been weak.

The next morning, Steve’s bright eyes fix on Bucky hopefully over the breakfast table.

Bucky doesn’t look at him; he can’t.

\--

Slowly, things start to return to normal.

Steve comes home every night to a home-cooked meal, a clean apartment, and Bucky.

It should be enough. It isn’t.

Bucky smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes anymore, and more often than not, he looks away from Steve.

There are still nights when Steve wakes to the sound of Bucky’s screams and climbs into his bed without a word spoken between them. Those nights, Steve lies awake and listens to the soft thump of Bucky’s heartbeat, the cadence of his breathing, letting it ground him.

He resolutely doesn’t think about all the other things he wants: to touch Bucky everywhere, to make him tremble for reasons that have nothing to do with the war still raging inside of him.

Sometimes, Bucky seems back to his old self. On clear nights, they lie on the roof of their Brooklyn apartment and look at the stars - just like they used to when they lived in a much grottier neighbourhood, in their pre-war place that always smelled like boiled cabbage and lye from the laundry next door.

One hot July afternoon, when Steve is sorting through a pile of dirty clothes, Bucky looks up from his paper and says, “I’m not your housewife, Rogers. You can wash out your own skivvies.”

Steve smiles, feeling like his heart will burst.

\--

It’s been a while, but Steve can’t shake off the idea that the time they have is somehow borrowed – like he was never supposed to have this in the first place.

As time passes, the feeling grows like a weed inside Steve. It strangles his breathing, claws at his chest until he wakes up one night screaming, just like Bucky.

Bucky is there in an instant, the dip of his weight tilting the mattress. His warm hands are either side of Steve’s face as he asks, “Steve, are you okay? Steve, say something. _Steve.”_

And Steve is pushing his mouth to Bucky’s, kissing him like a man who knows he is about to fall and will let the abyss swallow him up willingly. Bucky’s lips are hot and firm on his, and his hands are pressing Steve back into the mattress, gentle and sure, fumbling at the buttons of his shirt and parting fabric to bare the skin beneath.

“You want this?” Steve asks, breathless, praying that the answer won’t be _no._

Bucky’s smile is sad when he looks at him, but he says, “Yeah, Steve. I want this."

Steve drags Bucky closer with a fistful of his shirt, and kisses him again. It’s not like kissing Peggy -   Bucky's mouth is rough on his, the scrape of teeth across Steve's lower lip and the burn of Bucky's stubble against his cheeks - but Steve wants this, needs this to keep his head above water, and he can't go back now.

Kissing Bucky feels like falling. 

Too impatient to touch, they don't bother with anything more than taking off their shirts and getting their pants open.

Bucky wraps a hand around Steve's cock and strokes him between needy kisses, until Steve comes with a soft cry of Bucky’s name against his throat. 

When Steve takes Bucky into his mouth and sucks at him – he’s never done this before, but there were a few girls on the USO tour, and Steve knows what feels good for him, so he tries to remember - Bucky makes a desperate sound that sounds almost like a sob. Bucky’s fingers are tight in Steve’s hair, his eyes narrow and heavy-lidded when he comes, sharp and salty all over Steve’s tongue.

Steve’s lips find the hollow of Bucky’s hip and press to the tiny surgical scar there – one of many silvery marks covering Bucky’s body that have been there since he rescued him. Bucky flinches, but the hand still in Steve’s hair rakes over his scalp, and Steve feels like it will be okay.

“Will you stay, Buck?” Steve asks, the sweat still cooling on their exposed skin.

Bucky says nothing, but he pulls him close.

\--

The next morning, Bucky opens his eyes to soft light peeking around the edges of the curtains, and the knowledge that he’s slept through a whole night without dreaming of the war, of torture and screams, of Steve dying.

Steve has left a note: _Had to go into the office. See you later, punk._

Bucky presses a shirt, shines his shoes and leaves the house for the first time in a month. He finds the art supply store off Decatur Street that Steve always used to go to, buys him the most expensive set of pencils he can afford and a sketchbook with the softest, finest paper he’s ever touched.

When he turns the corner into their road, Bucky is looking at his purchases, pleased with himself. He isn’t paying attention to his surroundings.

It’s too late by the time he feels the body slamming into his back, the sting against his neck.

_No, no. Steve –_

_…_

\--

On July 24th, 1948, James Buchanan Barnes goes missing, and Steve finally knows why it felt like he was living on borrowed time.

It’s been no secret in the neighbourhood that Bucky didn’t go out much, and when he did, would walk around like a hunted man with hands shoved in his pockets and the clenched-jawed expression shared by many a returning soldier who couldn’t adjust to being back in the world.

The most horrifying thing, for Steve, is that the authorities treat the case like a foregone conclusion from the beginning. As far as the police are concerned, Bucky was an ex-POW, struggling to adapt to civilian life – he’s not the first broken soldier to take matters into his own hands, and he won’t be the last.

Steve knows that Bucky would _never_ do it, the Bucky that followed him on dangerous missions all over Europe even though he screamed and shook in their tent at night with memories of his torture.

For Captain America’s best friend, some show of effort is made. The SSR get involved; they dredge the East River and the Hudson, and Steve sits with his head in his hands, praying they won't pull Bucky's waterlogged body from the silt.

The next day, Steve sees Bucky's picture on the front of the _Brooklyn Eagle_ with the headline “Tragic ending of American war hero”. He barely makes it to the bathroom before vomiting up the contents of his stomach.

Three days after that, Steve notices an open packet of Faber pencils scattered in the nearby gutter, and a sketchbook face down, its pages damp and filthy.

He doesn’t wonder anymore. He _hopes._

\--

“Howard, he wouldn’t. I know it.”

They’ve just come from the memorial service, and Steve has extricated himself from Bucky’s mother and sisters with the promise he’ll stop round for tea later.

“I believe you, pal.” Howard’s face is as haunted and dark as Steve's ever seen it. “But I don’t know where to start looking.”

\--

“Operation Paperclip.” Steve slams the file down on Peggy’s desk, and she flinches.

“Steve, you know I can’t –“

“No,” he snarls. “When were you ever gonna tell me that you recruited Arnim Zola into this organisation? That we’re bringing goddamn Nazi scientists into this country, after everything we fought for!”

“Steve,” Peggy murmurs, the lines of her mouth tight. “You’re making a scene.” The other agents of the SSR have given up pretending to be absorbed in their tasks and have all swivelled to look at Steve.

He watches Peggy give her boss a look that means _“sorry”_ and then he’s letting her steer him into the empty office at the end of the bank of desks.

“There are a lot of things you don’t understand, Steve,” she says urgently, the second the door closes at her back.

“The hell I don’t,” he snaps. “After what that man did to Bucky, all the suffering he caused to thousands, he belongs in a jail. Not working for our government.”

Peggy’s gaze is sympathetic, but full of her usual steel. “I know what Zola did. I read the report on your friend, in excruciating detail. Sometimes I used to dream about the horrors of it, but Barnes _lived_ them. I can’t imagine how he did.”

Steve makes a noise of agreement, but can’t say much more, because just thinking about the factory makes his stomach twist and threatens to make hot, angry tears spill from his eyes.

“I know he didn’t kill himself, Peg,” he says eventually, gripping the nearest chair with a force that makes the wood splinter. “Something’s going on here – I don’t know if he got mixed up in something.”

Peggy looks at him, pity evident in her eyes, and Steve’s heart sinks.

“No,” Steve says in a choked voice, “I can’t believe it, I can’t.”

Then he’s crying, all over the shoulder of Peggy’s elegant shift dress without a thought of dignity. She lets him do it, and this time when he presses the file into her hands, she takes it.

“I think we need to talk to Howard again,” Peggy says once she’s read the file, and Steve can already see the wheels turning inside her head.

For the first time since Bucky went missing, Steve can breathe.

Peggy _believes_ him.

\--

_October 12 th, 1949_

“Pretty good, huh?” says Howard, gesturing to the sleek aircraft in front of them, beaming ear to ear. It’s been more than a year since Bucky was declared missing, and so far their investigations have turned up nothing.

Steve is reluctantly starting to accept that maybe there is nothing there, and he’s been nurturing a false hope all along.

Peggy and Howard have done their very best, making the most of every one of their connections, whether in espionage, or in Howard’s case, the shadier enterprises he’d rather keep off the books.

Sometimes, Steve wakes in the night reaching for Bucky, stretching out hands in the dark and expecting them to meet a warm body with a soft smile. The disappointment when he opens his eyes and sees an empty bed feels like falling, every time.

Those nights, he still cries. Crying doesn’t help much, but he does it anyway.

Steve keeps living. He lives because Bucky would want him to live, whatever the circumstances.

Today, he’s come to Howard’s airfield outside Hoboken, for the unveiling of his new aircraft. He’s volunteered to be Howard’s test pilot, and is looking forward to it. In order to stop himself going crazy in the empty apartment without Bucky, Steve’s been taking flying lessons. His post-serum reflexes and quick mind have made him a natural with the instruments, and he’s learned to enjoy the freedom of being in the air.

“She’s a beauty, Howard,” Steve says, admiring the contours of gleaming metal.

“Isn’t she?” Howard grins, shaking Steve’s hand enthusiastically. “New stealth technology: if you don’t want to find this baby, you never will. Think it’s got a lot of military potential.”

“I hope you have a thoroughly splendid time, Captain Rogers,” Jarvis says, with a stiff smile.

“I’m sure I will.”

A woman with a cascade of blonde curls and a heavy Midwest accent comes over and introduces herself to Steve. “Dottie Underwood. Pleasure to meet ya, Captain Rogers.”

Steve smiles, helpless in the wake of Dottie’s full-wattage grin. He throws Howard a glare over her shoulder.

“I thought this was supposed to be a top-secret installation,” Steve mutters when Dottie has gone with Jarvis to exclaim over the plane’s sparkling paint job.

“You got me there,” Howard says, clapping a hand on Steve’s shoulder.  “Look, she’s a swell girl, and I swear she won’t talk. Just a bit of a flying enthusiast. You know, she lives in the same building as Peggy.”

Steve stifles a laugh and pulls his flying goggles down over his eyes. “You’d better not tell Peggy that.”

“Oh, by the way,” Howard murmurs, something in his gaze darkening, “I think I might have something on Barnes. When I cross-referenced the Leviathan files the SSR found at that abandoned base in Budapest, the same name kept popping up: _Project Winter Soldier._ Nobody knows what it is, and we’ve got nothing but ghost stories to go on.”

“What has that got to do with Bucky?” Steve asks, afraid to hear the answer.

“Not much, probably. But there’s one thing we found that makes me think. There were notes on experiments conducted in Russia a few years back, and they’re pretty similar to Dr Zola’s files on your friend.”

Steve feels his insides go cold. "Can you find out more?"

"I'm working on it." Howard gives him a grim smile.

“We ready, then?” Steve asks, looking away.

“Yup. Pre-flight checks completed. She’s all yours.”

“Not a scratch, Rogers,” he calls while Steve is lowering himself into the cockpit.

Steve gives Howard a brief salute and settles down to the business of preparing the plane for take-off. It keeps him busy enough not to think about the idea of the Winter Soldier, of whether it’s the start of a trail that will lead him straight to what happened to Bucky.

Unsolved missing persons cases that go beyond the first forty-eight hours are rarely solved - Steve knows that.

Bucky is _dead_. It’s a truth Steve has never allowed himself to confront, from the moment the NYPD told him they were giving up the search. Bucky is dead, and Steve isn’t sure if he’s strong enough to hear how it happened.

It’s much later, somewhere over the Atlantic when he realises he probably should have given Dottie Underwood a second look.

There’s a click, and the instruments are suddenly unresponsive. Steve struggles for a few minutes, trying to fix it, but he’s no engineer, not like Howard, and there seems nothing to be done. The plane veers off on its own course, and there is a soft whistle as a cloud of gas comes spilling out of concealed vents in the cockpit.

Steve lets his body relax into unconsciousness.

Bucky will be there when he wakes up, he’s sure of it.

\--

_April 17 th, 2012_

Steve wakes up alone.

They tell him he has slept decades in the ice, and he has no reason not to believe them.

There are other things he doesn’t believe: that his plane was unsalvageable, for instance.

He jolts awake that same night, a name sharp and clear in his mind: _Project Winter Soldier._

A SHIELD agent knocks on his door the next day, and tells Steve they are sending him to The Retreat to help him acclimatise to his new modern surroundings.

Steve refuses to go.

Not two hours later, he finds himself in Nick Fury’s office, holding an old file from the archives with stiff, shaky hands that still don’t seem to work properly (a side effect of the ice, the doctors had said before they shipped him back to New York).

“What can you tell me about this?” asks Steve.

Fury runs a hand over the file, pushing away the dust on its surface.

“I can tell you that you shouldn’t be asking.” His face is grim.

Anger flares in Steve’s chest. “I’m gonna level with you, Director Fury. Decades ago, someone tried damn hard to kill me, and they didn’t succeed. I think it may be the same people who killed my friend.”

“We know,” Fury says slowly. “As I said to you yesterday, we were unable to analyse your plane. The components had deteriorated after that long spent in the ice.”

He is looking at Steve dead on, but Steve knows that this man deals in the business of lies and deceit, that he could make him believe anything.

“And Project Winter Soldier?” Steve demands.

Fury chuckles. “Nothing but a Russian ghost story. They did a few experiments back in the day, but nobody ever managed to recreate Dr Erskine’s work and create a super-assassin.”

Steve goes back to his sparsely furnished apartment with the idea of doing a bit of research of his own. He spends a few minutes fiddling with his new laptop in frustration before finally giving up.

That night, he dreams of Bucky’s hands on his skin, the heat of Bucky’s mouth pressed to his neck, the way he’d held him close the night before he disappeared.

When he wakes up, tears in his eyes, Steve whispers into the darkness, “Bucky, I’m sorry. I let you down, I know it.”

\--

Steve tries the Black Widow, a few days after the Battle of New York.

She glances at the file, and something like fear crosses her face: Steve has never seen Natasha Romanov look afraid, not even when they were facing down an army of aliens.

“Where did you get this, Cap?” Natasha whistles low, still staring at the foolscap in Steve’s hands like it’s going to bite her.

“It’s Steve,” he says. “And I found it in the archives. It’s a file Howard Stark helped me put together back in 1949, before I went into the ice.”

“Why were you looking for the Winter Soldier?”

He tells her, trying to ignore the way his voice shakes when he tells her about losing Bucky, and when he’s done, Natasha looks more fearful than ever.

“I can’t help you, Steve. I’m sorry.”

After Natasha leaves, Steve falls into a fitful sleep and dwells on Bucky in his dreams. Since waking from the ice, he can’t quite remember Bucky’s face anymore, only faint impressions: a flash of dark hair, a warm smile, a whisper of “Steve” against his skin.

\--

Steve lives.

He gets used to the twenty-first century and all its idiosyncrasies. He plays the game, acts the good SHIELD agent: Captain America, defender of freedom.

He keeps looking for answers. Steve finds – and it gives him a pang, to say the least – that Howard Stark never stopped searching for him. With a little more digging into the Triskelion’s vast archives, he discovers a reference to their old Winter Soldier investigation, the one Howard was conducting at the time Steve took his ill-fated test plane out.

He spots the name Dottie Underwood and it stirs something in his memory: the woman at Howard’s airfield, with blonde hair and laughing eyes. According to the file, she was a Leviathan agent, trained in a precursor to the Red Room, and once tried to kill Peggy. Steve shudders – at least that’s solved the mystery of who tampered with his plane, and why. A symbol like Captain America would have been feared by Leviathan; it would have made sense to take him out.

There are twelve more files of evidence that Howard amassed over the decades, but when Steve tries to access them, he finds they have been deleted.

As the months pass, every trail Steve follows leads to nowhere and it doesn’t take him long to come to the conclusion that has to be deliberate.

One day, a year or so out of the ice when he’s just moved to D.C, Natasha comes to his place with a housewarming gift.

“Uh, thanks,” Steve says, accepting the potted palm and waving her inside. “Didn’t expect to see you until next week. We don’t have an unscheduled mission, do we?”

“You have to stop looking, Steve,” Natasha says in a hushed voice, no preamble. “I know what you accessed in the Triskelion.”

“Natasha, it was just a few files, and they weren’t even there.” Steve takes the whistling kettle from the stovetop and pours tea into two cups.

“No, you don’t understand,” she says, coming to his side to whisper in his ear, her breath hot against his neck. “I know other people who’ve gone looking for those files. They all ended up as dead as Howard Stark.”

Steve shudders, all thoughts of tea forgotten. He turns to face her. “Tell me what you know.”

Natasha puts a finger to her lips. Steve lets her drag him to the bathroom, confused though he is about what the hell is going on. She switches on the shower full blast and they kneel on the floor.

“Want to tell me what we’re doing?” Steve frowns.

“Ears everywhere,” Natasha says.

A frisson ghosts up Steve’s spine at the idea his apartment is _bugged._

“Tony told me Howard never stopped looking for you. Seems to have a few issues about that – his childhood was all about Captain America’s sacrifice, apparently.” Natasha’s smile is warm, but it doesn’t touch her eyes.

Steve doesn’t smile back. “Come on. You know something, Natasha.”

“I know all kinds of things.”

With a resigned sigh, she reaches for the hem of her shirt and lifts it to reveal an ugly pink scar on her stomach.

“Woah,” Steve says, before he can stop himself.

Steve is silent while Natasha tells him about cold, cold eyes that stared her down in Odessa - eyes that belonged to an assassin with a metal arm and an utter lack of mercy.

“There are people who say Howard Stark was on the verge of discovering something significant before his untimely death. I think it might have been something to do with this mystery assassin.”

“So how are you still alive, if you know all this?” Steve asks, feeling his heartbeat jumping under his skin.

“I’m smarter than you,” Natasha says gravely. “Stop, Steve. Or you’re going to end up like the rest of them.”

Knowing that SHIELD are monitoring his apartment certainly makes Steve a little more careful about what he says. He wants to tell Peggy about his suspicions, but her lucid days are becoming few and far between, and he doesn’t know who might be listening.

He takes Natasha at her word for the time being, keeps his nose clean and takes every mission SHIELD assigns him.

At the same time, Steve’s nightmares get worse. He dreams of Bucky on the factory table – Steve never saw it, but his mind can fill in the blanks for him – Bucky stuck full of needles, steel blades slicing through his skin, rank and serial number on his lips like a prayer. Other times, the dreams are all wrong. Steve watches Bucky fall from the train in the Alps, and wakes up screaming every time.

\--

Sometimes, when the pain of losing Bucky burns in Steve’s chest so much he thinks he will break, he goes out. He goes to bars – places where no-one would be looking for Captain America - and finds dark-haired men with blue eyes and easy smiles.

He takes them back to his apartment, lets them spread him apart, shatter him with hands and mouth and cock, and kids himself that he’s forgetting Bucky.

When they leave, Steve curls shaking fingers into his pillow and tries to sleep. He never does. Instead, he thinks about the warmth of Bucky's body curled around him, the fierce shine of Bucky’s blue eyes, the way Bucky _believed_ in him.

Steve hates himself every time. He knows it's different these days - he doesn't have to drown in self-loathing for sharing his bed with a man instead of a woman - but that's not why he hates himself.

He wants Bucky, and instead he chooses this, when it's hardly a choice at all.

\--

Steve isn’t sure when he decided he would gladly die if it meant finding out what happened to Bucky.

He never expected to realise this on an exploding helicarrier, with a metal fist pummelling at his face, a fist that belongs to Bucky.

Then Steve is falling, falling like in his nightmares where he watches Bucky fall from the train –

Waking up in the hospital, Steve can only think that he should have known the Winter Soldier was Bucky all along.

Maybe he always knew, deep down, and just didn’t want to believe it.

\--

“Operation Paperclip,” Sam says, bringing up the files on the tablet. “Zola identified Bucky early on: he was his only successful attempt in the endurance experiments he conducted at the Krausberg factory. Looks like they figured out he was in New York, and Leviathan – or a HYDRA cell operating within it – captured him.”

Steve has to turn away, because he can’t breathe.

He _knew_ it, had known it from the second he saw the sketchbook and pencils lying in the gutter.

Bucky would never have left him by choice.

Sam puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “You sure you want to hear all this now?”

Steve has read through the Winter Soldier file that Natasha obtained for him, over and over. He has memorised the subject’s tolerance for pain, analysis of his weapon proficiency and combat skills, the steps of the blank-slate conditioning process. In those pages, Bucky has lived and died more than a hundred times, and Steve will never let himself forget it.

“Yeah.”

Sam squints at the screen. “By the looks of it, they’re probably responsible for the hit on you as well.” Steve feels his stomach lurch, but then, it’s not much of a surprise to find out that HYDRA was behind him being frozen for the second time.

“There’s not much to go on after that,” Sam continues. “We know they moved him to Moscow in 1950, but everything to do with the Winter Soldier was mothballed or destroyed when HYDRA initialised Project Insight. Natasha’s digging. There’s more, we’re sure of it. Might give us a clue as to where he’s hiding out.”

“Thanks, Sam. Any luck?” Steve knows what the answer will be – he’s waiting for the cold dread to settle into the pit of his stomach, the way it always does – but he still asks.

Sam’s smile is sad. “I’m still looking. You go on with all your Avenging. I’ll keep chasing the breadcrumbs.”

\--

Steve starts to hope.

Every time he sees a flash of dark hair disappearing around a corner, his heartbeat skitters and he thinks it might be Bucky. Grocery shopping, he spots a young man with a dark ponytail, facing away from him. Steve finds himself looking down at the man’s hands to see if he wears gloves.

It’s not Bucky. None of them are ever Bucky.

\--

Standing outside the doors of the facility, Steve balls his hands into fists, trying not to fall apart. Bucky is in there, _Bucky_ , who came back like Steve knew he would, even if it took fifteen months.

“He doesn’t want to see you,” Natasha tells him, tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

He accepts it, even if the words scratch at his throat like knives; he has to accept whatever Bucky wants, because this is his choice.

Steve throws himself into missions, tearing through HYDRA bases with nothing but his shield and a heart full of poisonous anger. It doesn’t help much, but at least he’s doing something.

Sam and Natasha keep Steve updated. Bucky is seeing therapists, has new hobbies – apparently he and Tony like to hang out in the workshop fixing stuff – and a new life that Steve isn’t part of.

It aches somewhere low in the pit of Steve’s stomach whenever he thinks about Bucky. He never stops hoping that Bucky will come back to him, but every day he doesn’t, it gets harder for Steve to ignore that gnawing ache.

“You do realise he talks about you all the time,” Sam says to him one day, when they’re on the subway heading to a basketball game. “Look, he wants to get himself in order first. He doesn’t want to burden you.”

Sam’s words make Steve think about after the war - all those nights when he heard Bucky screaming and moaning in his sleep on the other side of the wall, and he wanted to go to him but didn’t. Bucky thought he was a burden then, but he wasn’t. Steve would have slept beside Bucky every night if he could have got away with it; he _should_ have. All Steve had ever wanted was to keep Bucky close and chase away his nightmares, but in the end, he hadn’t been able to save him.

At the next stop, Steve is out of his seat and pushing out of the doors - not caring that they’re nowhere near Madison Square Garden, leaving Sam to go and see the Knicks on his own.

He _can’t_ listen to this, he can’t.

Sam doesn’t follow him.

\--

Six months later, Bucky is standing at his door.

“Hi, Steve.” Bucky is calm and collected, hair pulled back into a loose bun, clean-shaven, in jeans and a soft blue shirt the same colour as his eyes.

“Bucky?” Steve croaks, rubbing at his sleep-heavy eyes. He’s unshaven, hasn’t showered or brushed his teeth for four days. Steve shrinks away from Bucky, trying not to think about how he must look – and smell – right now.

In Steve’s fucked-up existence, this is how things have come to pass. Somehow, Bucky has become the one who is whole, and Steve is the one breaking apart from the inside out.

Bucky is here at his door, and all Steve can think of is going back to bed and sleeping the day away.

“Please, don’t,” Steve says, his voice catching.

Bucky’s face falls, and it hurts worse than anything Steve has ever imagined – worse than Bucky _dying_ , even.

He slams the door on Bucky, and manages to wait until the sound of footsteps fades before he collapses on the other side, crying his heart out.

He wants.

Steve’s always known wanting isn’t the same as having; it felt like that before the war, when he was ninety pounds of anger and shame, watching Bucky across the room while he slept, feeling the throb of his cock against his thigh. Those nights, Steve would stroke himself cautiously, a hand pressed to his mouth to muffle his gasps until he spilled into his other hand, wishing it was Bucky.

It’s different now. Steve knows he doesn’t deserve Bucky, not like this, not when he let him down so badly.

He should have put the pieces together sooner, all those years ago.

\--

Sam comes over and looks at the sink full of dishes, the piles of dirty laundry everywhere, and Steve in his dressing gown, unkempt and exhausted with bloodshot eyes.

Steve would be embarrassed, but he’s just so tired and everything hurts so much he can’t bring himself to care.

He goes back to bed.

Later, he wakes to the scent of cinnamon in the air. There’s a pie baking in the oven, his apartment is clean and there’s a sports bag on the floor full of Sam’s things.

“I’m staying for a while,” says Sam, and he isn’t smiling. “And I don’t want to hear a single damn word out of that mouth, Rogers.”

Steve says nothing but he is so, so grateful just the same. “I’ll take a piece of that pie when it’s ready,” he says weakly.

Sam runs him a bath.

While he’s sitting in the water, Steve hears the click of the front door from down the hall.

 _“How is he?”_ says a soft voice that’s unmistakeably Bucky’s, and Steve can’t help letting out a tiny sob.

_“I don’t know, man. He’s really bad. I don’t know if he wants to see you. Sorry.”_

_“Okay,”_ Bucky says, his voice small.

Sam says something else, in a hushed tone too quiet for Steve to hear, and then the door shuts with another click.

Steve stays in the bath until the water goes cold, trying not to cry.

The next morning, he laces up his sneakers and goes for a run; it’s been weeks. He runs until his lungs burn and the sweat pours off his back, then calls the number SHIELD gave him for one of their approved therapists.

It feels like living.

\--

“It’s not just depression. You’re grieving,” the therapist tells him.

Steve isn’t used to talking about his feelings; it wasn’t what you did, back before he went into the ice, but it helps. Learning that his breakdown was an inevitable time-bomb waiting to go off somehow makes it easier to accept. He realises he's never given himself the time to grieve for Bucky, or for his old life.

That night, he dreams of Bucky falling from the train in the Alps, even though he knows he was jumped on a Brooklyn sidewalk, drugged and kidnapped.

There are tears on Steve’s cheeks when he opens his eyes, and for the first time in his life, he lets himself cry without shame.

Tears hurt, but they heal; he knows this much.

\--

“Do you remember our apartment we had after the war?” Steve asks one day, over coffee at a new place in Park Slope - the kind with unvarnished trestle tables and tattooed baristas with beards.

“Yeah.” Bucky wipes cappuccino foam off his top lip with his thumb, and Steve finds himself watching for a second too long. Bucky’s lips are a little red, and Steve wants to touch them, to kiss, to –

But then Bucky says “I remember everything,” and Steve feels hot all over, looks away like he can hide the fact that he’s blushing to the tips of his ears.

Steve remembers every detail about their night together - the joy of finally touching Bucky, the way he'd always dreamed of - he just didn’t expect Bucky would remember, not after everything that’s happened.

He jumps at the touch of warm fingers skating across his knuckles. “Hey, it’s okay,” Bucky says.

It isn’t.

Steve sucks down a gulp of his own coffee, focusing on the bitter warmth so he won’t have to think about how his heart is racing, with Bucky’s fingers on his and Bucky’s words that might be about to tear him apart all over again.

Bucky leans in across the table, dark hair falling into his eyes. He looks at Steve intently. “I hung onto that night as long as I could. Until they took it from me.”

Steve feels winded, like he’s been punched. Bucky is there, looking at him – and maybe his face is set in taut lines, his hands shaking a little where they’re clutching the cup – but he’s there, as heartbreakingly honest as he ever was.

“ _God,_ Bucky.”

“One day, you gotta forgive yourself, Stevie,” Bucky says earnestly- and Steve hasn’t heard that nickname since 1948 –“because I did. A long time ago. You couldn’t have known. Christ, someone tried to _kill_ you for what you found out.”

“Well, they tried,” Steve says, forcing a smile. He can taste bile in his throat alongside the coffee.

Bucky throws some bills on the table. “C’mon. Let’s go for a walk in the park.”

\--

Steve helps Bucky find a place of his own; he's been living in the tower for more than a year, and that's long enough. It’s not exactly like picking up where they left off, but it’s a start.

After much searching, Bucky settles on an ex-industrial loft in TriBeCa and fills it with old furniture from thrift stores and vintage antique houses – Natasha teases him good-naturedly about being a hipster, but really, Bucky just likes things that remind him of his old life he had with Steve.

It aches sometimes when he sees Steve watching him, with those soft eyes that feel like a touch on Bucky’s skin.

But it’s taken Bucky this long to feel like himself again, and for Steve to feel better, so Bucky doesn’t say anything. They both have their good days and their bad days, and they’re living: that’s something.

They’re watching a movie at Bucky’s place when he finally cracks.

“I’m sorry I stayed away, Steve,” Bucky says. “I wanted to see you, so many times. I just didn’t know how. I wanted to be better for you.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Steve growls, but he’s already crying, and Bucky is pressing his forehead to his and suddenly he’s crying too, tears spilling from his cheeks and mingling with Steve’s while they hold each other.

“I missed you,” Bucky says.

He presses his lips to Steve’s mouth, and it’s barely a touch, but the quiet sound Steve makes in his throat is enough for Bucky to slide his hands down to rest on Steve’s waist.

Steve pulls back like he’s been shocked with a cattle prod. "Uh, I missed you, too."

Bucky is left breathing in staccato gasps, trying to get his erratic heartbeat under control.

They go back to watching the movie at opposite ends of the couch.

Bucky starts to hope, and that hope grows when Steve yawns and suggests he crashes on the couch for the night.

When Bucky goes to bed he lies awake, trying not to think about Steve, sleeping just a thin wall away from him.

\--

Later that night, Steve’s eyes flutter open. He’s wedged into the cushions on Bucky’s couch, a blanket tangled around his legs.

“Hey,” says a soft voice behind his head; it’s Bucky.

It’s still dark out; the clock says 4:23. Steve feels groggy.

“You okay?” Steve asks, his voice gravelly with sleep. Bucky sinks onto the couch and Steve shifts his legs over to make room.

Bucky’s hair is tousled, he’s got no shirt on and is wearing nothing but a pair of sleep pants; the sight makes Steve instantly hard, which could be awkward if they’re about to have a serious conversation right now. Steve shifts uncomfortably under the blanket.

Then Bucky looks at him and shudders out a slow breath, like he's nervous. Steve brushes his fingers over Bucky’s cool metal ones, then Bucky’s hands are stroking at the sides of his face, tugging him closer.

Steve buries his face in Bucky’s hair, and Bucky whispers, “Yeah, I’m okay now,” in his ear.

Listening, Steve hears Bucky’s breathing turn heavy and shallow. He digs his fingers into the waistband of Bucky’s pants, smiling when Bucky’s bare stomach jumps under his fingers and he let out a tiny sound against Steve’s neck.

“You want this?” Bucky asks. For a second, Steve feels absurdly like crying, because he remembers asking the same thing of Bucky, somewhere across time in a Brooklyn apartment.

“God, yeah. I want this, Bucky,” Steve says.

He shoves the blanket away and kisses Bucky, wet and hot and desperate, their hips shifting together in a way that sends fire right through Steve’s veins.

And Steve doesn’t ask, doesn’t think, because he wants to do this, wants Bucky with the pent-up need of decades. He gets on his knees, drags down fabric until there’s nothing in the way of his mouth on Bucky’s cock.

“Shit,” Bucky mutters when Steve takes him right to the back of his throat, trying not to gag because it’s been a while since he’s done anything like this. Steve looks up at Bucky - eyes half-closed, biting his lip - and thinks this might just be the hottest thing he’s ever seen.

Pressing his palms to Bucky’s thighs, Steve feels them shaking while he takes Bucky apart with tongue and teeth and lips. He holds his hips down and sucks at him until Bucky comes in a spill of bitter heat on his tongue, with a groan so low and needy it breaks something inside Steve.

“Please, let me,” Bucky says, skin flushed and panting, eyes darting towards the floor like he’s got a mind to get on his knees himself.

Steve slumps down next to Bucky on the sofa. “No time,” he insists, hot all over, colour high in his face.

Bucky gets Steve’s jeans open, takes him in hand and strokes, slow and sure, breathing heavily into Steve’s neck. It takes no more than a few drags of Bucky’s hand over the head of Steve’s cock before Steve comes hard enough that it twists up his insides, a strangled cry of Bucky’s name on his lips.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, wiping the mess off on the front of Steve’s pants.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes in agreement.

“Look, Steve,” Bucky tells him, moving closer, reaching for Steve until he’s practically in his lap, “this isn’t just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I want this. You, me: the whole thing. I wanted it all those years ago, back in Brooklyn.”

It’s not really a surprise, but it hits Steve square in the chest like a bolt of lightning, the idea that Bucky wants him, the way he’s _always_ wanted Bucky.

“I wanted it too, Buck. We could have had it all,” Steve says, trying to ignore the surge of anxiety that always comes when he thinks about his futile attempts to find Bucky.

A hand presses firm to Steve’s shoulder. “That wasn’t your fault. I’m gonna tell you that for the rest of my life, if I have to.”

Bucky’s face splits into a grin, and his blue eyes are bright and clear when he leans in and kisses Steve, warm and slow and gentle.

Steve runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair, tangling up the messy, dark strands. He could cry, it feels so good – better even than the memory of their one night together - because now Steve can love Bucky without fear, without shame, and he plans to make up for lost time.

When Bucky breaks the kiss and pulls Steve to his feet, leading him towards the bedroom, all Steve can think is that this is the way things were always supposed to be.

\--

Steve wakes.

Bucky is there beside him, breathing softly, his face pressed into his arm. Steve watches him sleep with a soft smile, feeling like his heart is too big for his chest.

He knows he can't make up for the life they should have had together, the years that were taken from them, but after everything, they still have each other; that’s got to mean something.

Reaching out, he prods at Bucky’s shoulder.

“Mmm? Steve?” Bucky smiles lazily, eyes only half-open.

Steve leans in and starts to kiss him awake.

They’ve got all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Title by Mumford and Sons.


End file.
